When you are in Spain, you are going to often be thinking about food! Compared to the northern lands of Europe, food is much better quality and cheaper down here... and so it will be hard to go wrong with finding a decent place to shop for food. However, if you can find a good market that is recommended by locals, then you will find yourself in raw food heaven! You just need to figure out how to cook it all up into something scrumptious!
The Mercat de Denia (Municipal Market) is a fresh food market that our friends in Denia always did their shopping. Like many Spanish, they love their food and cooking... and so, I trust that their selection of this place as their "go-to" market was not completely random! After all, there were many local corner stores and supermarkets between their home and this market... so, there must have been something special about going here!
From the outside, the building is pretty unremarkable... in fact, without the signage... I wouldn't have thought that there was a food market inside!
The market has a number of entrances into the building. The one that we used just happened to be the one that was closest to our particular walking route from the home. But upon entry, we moved in an air-conditioned fish market... where there were an incredible amount of freshly caught fish for sale. Denia has fishing boats leaving from the harbour nearby, and so there is a large selection of Mediterranean fishes and shellfishes for sale here.
Moving further in, the building opens out into a larger area that is divided into 2 large areas each with three lanes of stalls. There is a wide variety of food stalls, ranging from meats, cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables and bakeries. As a foreigner, the best part of it was that they had no problems using VISA network, so I was happily spending cryptocurrencies using the Binance and Crypto.com debit cards.
I know that many other markets in Europe can have problems with anything other than cash... but Denia is pretty touristy, and so every stall had support for credit and debit card payments in addition to cash.
Lots of juicy fresh fruit for sale.. the quality is much better than in Netherlands, decent colours and the taste is sweet! I always love eating down here, where just eating a bowl of fruit is so much more enjoyable than the watery tastes of the north! Well, lots of sun will do that for you!
... and you can't be in Spain without trying out the million and one different cuts of dried and preserved meats that are on offer. I'm not going to embarrass myself by saying how much I had spent at this stall... stocking for the return to Netherlands! Speaking of which, it is quite common for the meat to be cut up and vacuum sealed for travel, so don't hesitate to ask so that you can take a bit of Spain with you!
The market does start to be a bit busy later in the day... so, a quick little tip... go early in the morning! Spanish people don't seem to wake up before about 11!